Mestizo

“ The most serious discomfort experienced by any one within these areas was caused to the mestizo ruling group, whose members bitterly resented the blow to their prestige in being treated like every one else. They had been accustomed to have others work for them and obey them blindly. ”

“ An important, though numerically small, element in the population of the larger cities are the mestizos, or half-breeds, the result of admixture either between the Chinese or the Spanish and the natives. These mestizos occupy about the same social position as the mulattos of the United States. But they are the richest and most enterprising among the native population. ”

“ To explain the practical significance of these figures let me repeat what was said in an earlier chapter, that the mestizos and whites are, for political and social purposes, practically one class and that the ruling class, the Indians being passive, and in a political sense outside the nation. Even in Paraguay, an almost purely Indian state, the comparatively few mestizos dominate politically. In Brazil it is the whites who rule, but many of them are tinged with negro, fewer with Indian, blood. ”

“ There was little to fear from the passive Indian, but everything from the middle race, the mestizos, that mixture of activity and indolence, of brightness and dreaminess, insincerity and selfishness, in whose ever-growing strength rests the future of the country. ”

“ Of slaves, I shall speak by and by more at large; these are Africans, creole negroes, mulattos, and mestizos. The maxim of the civil law, partus sequitur ventrem, is in force here as well as in the colonies of other nations. [199]
These several mixtures of the human race have their shades of difference of character as well as of colour. First we must treat of the whites. The Europeans who are not in office, or who are not military men, are, generally speaking, adventurers who have arrived in that country with little or no capital. ”

“ The mestizos include the great majority of the rancheros, or farmers, and the arrieros, or mule-drivers; many of them are educated, and take a leading part in law, politics, and medicine, where they often attain high rank. ”

“ They number about twenty per cent, mixed Hispano-Americans, or mestizos, forty-three per cent, and full blood Indians thirty-five per cent of the whole population. The mestizos are the farmers and rancheros, the muleteers and servants. ”

“ The mestizos who live among the whites and intermarry with them class themselves with them whenever their economic position permits. Dwelling in remote regions and in villages among the Indians they tend to revert to the Indian type. Until they acquire wealth they form the artisan element, the traders, and the shopkeepers. ”

“ Modern inventions, arts, tastes, science, emulation, new forms of thought, new modes of development, will be introduced and implanted by these emigrants. The million of white men, and the two millions of mestizos, will become more prosperous under the increased trade and industry of the nation. A good government will be ensured, for the hardy emigrants fly from the political oppression and poverty of the old world to enjoy peaceful liberty in this. ”

“ It shall not be lawful for any number of slaves, free Negroes, mulattoes, or mestizoes, even in company with white persons, to meet together and assemble for the purpose of mental instruction or religious worship either before the rising of the sun or after the going down of the same. ”

“ Anyone who chooses to consider all the more educated mestizos as whites, and all Indians with any touch of white blood as mestizos, would, of course, bring out different figures. The tendency of official statistics is in that direction, for everybody wishes to be reckoned as a white man, but such a method does not truly represent the racial facts. ”

“ It may be that education and experience will develop the mestizos into a vigorous progressive nationality, but the first century of self-government can hardly be said to have given much promise of such a result. ”

“ The guilds of mestizos and natives were continually watching one another, venting their bellicose spirits and their activities in jealousy and distrust. At mass one day the gobernadorcillo of the natives was seated on a bench to the right, and, being extremely thin, happened to cross one of his legs over the other, thus adopting a nonchalant attitude, in order to expose his thighs more and display his pretty shoes. ”

“ So rarely, however, does he emerge that one may broadly say that the Nation consists in these republics of white men and mestizos only, the Indian constituting, if not another nation, yet a separate nationality, marked off not merely by poverty, but by its language and the adherence of its members to ancient superstitions. ”

“ Besides these there are, possibly, thirteen millions of mestizos or half-breeds, and fifteen of persons who deem themselves white, even if a good many have some infusion of aboriginal blood.110 But if we omit Argentina, almost entirely, and Uruguay entirely, white, as well as Brazil, and confine our view to the other eight republics in which the Indian element is larger, a probable estimate would put the number of pure Indians at more than double that of the whites, and a little less than that of the mestizos. ”

“ You will notice that I have taken as my title, “Some Current Folk-Songs of the Negro and Their Economic Interpretation.” Now it is somewhat misleading at this day and time to speak of the negro as a “folk.” That word seems to me to be applicable only to a people living in an industry in which economic function has not been specialized. So it would be more accurate to speak of “negro class lore.” The class that I am treating of is the semi-rural proletariat. ”

“ Will the American Negro, especially the city Negro, acquire his share through hard work and thrift? Will young Negroes quit the poolrooms with their debasing effects and march into usefulness and comfort on the land? Will the Negro seek the signs of civilization—the automobile and the dress suit—and miss civilization as it is represented in the home and the bank account? Will the Negro forego some pleasures today so as to enjoy richer treasures tomorrow? Will the Negro allow others to think and plan for him instead of thinking and planning for himself? ”

“ Now just go back with me to the commencement of this century, and look at this race of which we are speaking. What then incuts our eyes? Why we find one universal fact connected Avith the Negro race—the fact of universal slavery, and the slave trade. If we turned to the West Indies, whether under Danish, Spanish, Dutch or English, rule, the black man, everywhere, was a chattel. If we turned to the American continent, we would have found the race in the same position there, whether under the Protestant rule of the North American colonies, or under the Romish rule of the South American States. ”

“ Sir, is there not yet hatred enough between the races which compose your southern population and the population of Mexico, their next neighbor, but you must go back eight hundred or a thousand years, and to another hemisphere, for the fountains of bitterness between you and them? ”

“ The slaves had their select classes in the house servants and the artisans. After freedom came, the Negro made four distinct efforts to reach economic safety. The first effort was by means of the select house-servant class; the second, by means of competitive industry; the third, by land-owning; and the fourth, by what I shall call the group economy.
First, let us look at the effort of the house servants. The one person under the slave régime who came nearest to escaping from the toils of slavery and the disabilities of caste was the favorite house servant. ”

“ Civilization, or the social condition of man, is the result and test of the qualities of every race. The benefit of this blood mixture, the negro is never to enjoy on this continent. In the South where he is raised, in the North, East, or West, it is all the same, no new blood is to be infused into his sluggish veins. ”

“ When peoples of the same race mingle by migration, the effect, as regards classes, depends chiefly on their [Pg 221] states of civilization and the character of the migration, as hostile or friendly. The peaceful advent of kindred settlers, like the English immigrants to the United States, creates no class divisions. ”

“ Wherever Negroes colonize in the cities or villages, North or South, wherever the hod-carrier, the porter, and the waiter are the society men of the town; wherever the picnic and the excursion are the chief summer diversion, and the revival the winter-time of repentance.... Wherever laughter and tears rub elbows by day, and the spirit of labour and laziness shake hands, there—there—is Happy Hollow. ”

“ There a circumscribed population of negro race has had a political and social and religious organisation and the elements of higher culture impressed upon it by Europeans, in the belief that it would be possible to construct a social environment which would mould the people. ”

“ Occasionally in letters and family diaries, written up to a hundred or more years ago, we read of a native man, woman, or youth being employed as a house-servant. The pitiable waifs, the objects of a feeble relenting and a strong anxiety, all under guardianship, living on the remnants of the family table, sleeping in out-buildings, mixed with negro blood, were miserable relics of the native race. ”

“ If I did not believe the negro was capable of sufficient development to make him a responsible small farmer, I should not want to remain in the business that I am any longer, because [Pg 174] I believe that the development of my business is necessarily based upon the development of the negro and the cultivation of my lands. The negro possesses two remarkable qualifications: one is that he is imitative, and the other is that he has got pride; he wants to dress well ”

“ His ideal of society was a pyramid, the lower courses representing the physical toilers, the intermediate strata supplying a higher quality of social service, while the crown was a class refined by leisure and cultivation and free to give themselves to generous and hospitable private life, with public affairs for their serious pursuit. He regarded the prominence of the laboring class in Northern communities as marking the inferiority of their society, and in the absorption of the wealthier class in trade he read a further disadvantage. ”

“ The mestiza, or mixed breed population, have followed the communistic instincts and customs of their Indian forbears; while from the Latin side of their make-up, they have certain tendencies which work well together with their Indian hatred of authority.
The mestiza, as well as the Indians, are mostly ignorant in book-knowledge, only about sixteen per cent. of the whole population of Mexico being able to read and write. It was not within the program of the "civilizing" regime to spend money in putting the weapon of learning in the people's hands. ”

“ At the end of the period of slavery, about two hundred and fifty years, the Negro race as a whole had learned, as I have stated, to wear clothes, to live in a home, to work with a reasonable degree of regularity and system, and a few had learned to work with a high degree of skill. ”

“ Thus, from a small beginning​—​from a few black slaves gathered together by night beneath the roof of a white man​—​this society has spread far and wide, like some huge wave, until now it boasts a vast increase of number, of every variety of shade, from the ruddy son of Britain, down to the jetty offspring of Afric’s soil. ”

“ In this address I said that the whole future of the Negro rested largely upon the question as to whether or not he should make himself, through his skill, intelligence, and character, of such undeniable value to the community in which he lived that the community could not dispense with his presence. ”

“ The negroes of the island probably number two-thirds of the entire population. They compose the working-class, whether enslaved or free. Those enslaved perform the work required on the plantations, the estates, and gardens of the landed proprietors, or perform the work of carriers, whether in the country or in the city. ”

“ These individuals all spell negro with a capital and declare that they are proud of their race. They parade its achievements—and these are not small when enumerated all at once—but they avoid intimate association with the great mass of negroes. ”

“ The negro race, by this time nearly extinct (except in Buenos Ayres) , has left, in its zambos and mulattoes, a link which connects civilized man with the denizen of the woods. This race mostly inhabiting cities, has a tendency to become civilized, and possesses talent and the finest instincts of progress. ”

“ What is the condition of the laborers in your section?
—A. The laborers in the Mississippi Valley are agricultural. But few whites are employed; they soon become landowners or tenants. Your question, therefore, reduces itself to, What is the condition of the negroes? I should say good, as compared with a few years ago, and improving. You must recollect that it has only been 18 years since the negroes emerged from slavery without a dollar and with no education, and that for generations they had been taught to rely entirely upon others for guidance and support. ”

“ The social superiority of the dominant race rooted itself firmly in the localities inhabited by them, and passed, as has been already remarked, from the cities to the rural districts. By degrees, also, it came to pass that the latter drew off from the former the upper portion of their population, who, in order to raise themselves still higher, and to mix with the conquerors, imitated, as far as they were able, their mode of life. ”